September 16, 2025, 2:15pm
Nobel Laureates Annie Ernaux, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and J.M.G. Le Clézio are among a group of twenty prominent writers who have signed a public letter to President Emmanuel Macron urging the immediate resumption of France’s evacuation program for Palestinian scholars, artists, and writers in Gaza.
Since its founding in 2017, the PAUSE program has provided visas and institutional support to hundreds of at-risk scholars and artists from conflict zones around the world, including Palestine. Significantly, the program allows Palestinian laureates from Gaza to continue their work while preserving their right to return to Palestine, as they would be arriving on talent visas and not as refugees.
The letter condemns the French government’s suspension of PAUSE and related evacuations from Gaza following a single case in which a student admitted to Sciences Po Lille was accused of sharing antisemitic statements. On 1 August 2025, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot declared that “no evacuation of any kind” would take place until further notice, a decision which left many approved applicants and their families—already accepted by French institutions—stranded amid famine and bombardment.
“Suspending a humanitarian program on the basis of one case amounts to collective punishment,” the signatories write, stressing that France must uphold its humanist commitments while Palestinians face what the UN and almost every major human rights group in the world has described as a genocide. They argue that PAUSE, while limited, remains one of the few existing lifelines and protects not only individuals but Palestinian cultural and intellectual life, threatened by the deliberate destruction of universities, schools, and cultural centers.
Other signatories of the letter include Alain Damasio, Mathias Énard, Anne Enright, Didier Eribon, Isabella Hammad, Kapka Kassabova, Karim Kattan, Rashid Khalidi, Naomi Klein, Deborah Levy, Édouard Louis, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Max Porter, Sally Rooney, Leïla Slimani, and Madeleine Thien.
The writers urge Macron to lift the suspension immediately and restore PAUSE as a model of protection for endangered voices. “We hope that France can follow through on its proclaimed humanist values,” they write, “and that the French government will make the right choice and resume PAUSE.”